In recent months I’ve been spending more time on night photography. It’s a difficult discipline, but one that can undoubtedly give very rewarding results – but you have to put the work in! This image was taken at my local haunt of St. Aidans Nature Reserve, between Leeds and Castleford. Clear skies are great for cityscapes, but when shooting wide scenes like this it’s tough to balance the exposure correctly. From experience I decided the best conditions would be partial cloud which would create movement in the sky and hopefully some colour too.

Allerton Bywater, near Castleford, England. 5th October 2016. Disused dragline and lake at night, with moving clouds and stars, site of former opencast coal mine, now a flourishing nature reserve.

Much of the difficulty in night photography is technical – as well as not forgetting anything crucial (missing one piece of equipment can ruin a photo session – I know.!). I had already scouted a good viewpoint for this image and arrived in darkness, around 7.30pm on an October’s night. First I took a test shot – this is for two reasons 1. To ensure sharp focus and 2. To make sure the composition is how I want it. Setting the ISO at 12800 and a wide aperture of f4 I could get a ‘quick’ test shot at about 5 seconds. Focusing can be tricky – I set the focus to infinity which proved to work perfectly; my test shot was sharp. I then set my exposure for my proper image on a lower ISO for minimal noise. I chose an ISO of 400 and aperture of f8. Again using experience I estimated an exposure time of seven and a half minutes; of course you can always do the exposure maths to work it out! With the camera on my tripod and a remote release I set the exposure to bulb mode, pressed the button then timed it on my phone.